“Help!” “I need to find articles about Apple’s corporate initiatives and how these are impacting their organizational structure. I searched ‘Apple’ AND ‘initiatives’ AND ‘organizational structure’ but can’t get anything relevant!”

This is a common question (and moan!) from business students taking their first stab at analyzing a company. The short answer is that you probably won’t find much using broad keywords because “organizational structure” and “initiatives” are just too general. And it’s quite rare that you’ll find that perfect Harvard Business Review paper with a title like: “A Theoretical Synthesis of Apple Inc.’s Corporate Initiatives and their Impact on Organizational Structure.”

Company research requires a lot of “reading between the lines.” This means using your analytical skills to unearth specific examples of a company’s initiatives or actions that you would conclude might impact the company’s bottom line or corporate structure. For example, seek articles discussing new executive appointments. Is there a new VP of Marketing with big plans for revamping the company’s image? Did they create any new divisions? Are there company changes—in the case of Apple–new production plants, marketing initiatives with release of the wildly popular iPad now surpassing 1 million sales? Here is an example of such an article in Business Source Premier using “apple” (CO Company Entity field) AND keyword “appointment”:

Apple recruits key talent to lead drive into mobile ad sales.

Besides articles, the SWOT analyses in the Datamonitor company reports (found in Business Source Premier) are another good source for insight on a company’s organizational structure and direction.

–Henri Mondschein
mondsche@callutheran.edu